Studio News: Midway, Ubisoft, Square Enix/Eidos. The sale of Midway to Warner Bros was approved by the courts, with the closing of deal to take place sometime in the next few days. This isn't good news to all of Midway though, as Midway Newcastle and Midway San Diego still find their heads on the chopping block and have only 60 days to find a buyer to stay their execution. Meanwhile, Toronto game dev hopefuls are rejoicing at Ubisoft's plans to build a new development studio in the city, creating 800 new jobs over the next decade. This is a great opportunity for anyone in the region. Finally, it seems that the publishing label of Eidos is no more, as Square Enix is changing it to Square Enix Europe. It's always somewhat sad to see a well-recognized brand die, although it won't be gone completely as it's still reserved for games that Eidos develops.
Valve and Blizzard refusing to back down. When Valve announced the impending release of Left for Dead 2, the response from gamers was swift: Uh, no. If Valve was ever worried about the petition, which constituted a rather small (one might say insignificant if economic times weren't so bad) percentage of the L4D community, that fear was laid to rest when pre-order sales shot through the roof. It's coming kiddies. Deal with it. Tho if you still refuse to purchase the new game, at least you may still be able to play with your more reasonable friends. This advocacy failure does not not bode well for the 51,631 Starcraft 2 fans (at the time of this writing) who want to see LAN support back in the game. I suspect that won't happen, either. I also suspect that it won't stop anyone from buying it. No doubt they all feel better trying, though.
Valve rethinking PS3 development. I talked last month about how Valve doesn't like to bother with PS3 development because it's just too much of a pain in the ass. Now they're saying they simply don't have the right talent to get the job done properly. Well - that's a simple fix! All you PS3 expert developers raise your hands if you're looking for work. C'mon, don't be shy. Anyone? ... Well, maybe with the way jobs are today there are actually plenty out there, if so then Valve is searching for YOU.
Daily Remainders - more cool stories/articles that didn't make the cut
Check out this kid training to become Mega Man. I thank my lucky stars once again that YouTube was not around when I was growing up. ThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyou. Also, the Katamari Forever soundtrack is on it's way out over in Japan.
Love the Game Career Guide and Game Design links. As a 18 year old student beginning to embark on his online game programming degree, it was both encouraging and useful to read those links. With the game industry (so far) proving itself to be a recession proof industry, I hope to make valuable contributions very soon!
The partition (Currently sitting at 77832 signatures at this time of writing) will have about as much effect as throwing a paper-plane and hoping for a tornado.
The interesting thing is that the primary reason they removed LAN Play is due to Piracy issues (If you can't LAN, you will need an original CD Key to have any human-competition at all)
The interesting question to ask is:
If "hackers" (And I use the term loosely) find a way to simulate a BattleNet Server, resulting in the ability to LAN, will this make Blizzard attempt to strengthen their anti-LAN code for Diablo 3, or realize it's pointless, and include LAN anyways... ?
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blamont
Member since: 7/16/2009
Posted - 7/16/2009 6:10:26 PM
Posted - 7/21/2009 2:12:47 AM
Read this post in Chinese
